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Internet law experts have called for Australian copyright laws to be amended so people can post online videos of themselves miming pop songs without risking prosecution.

Researcher Damien O'Brien and Professor Brian Fitzgerald of Queensland University of Technology (QUT) say miming copyright material and posting it online may be currently illegal.

They will explore copyright law in relation to the popular YouTube site in the Internet Law Bulletin.

The video sharing website YouTube hosts more than 65,000 new videos every day, many made by amateurs.

"A 12 year old girl uploads a video of herself lip-syncing the latest Shakira pop song onto YouTube and is served with a copyright infringement notice," they write.

"Has she breached copyright law?" The answer, they say, is yes.

"Certainly many of the videos that are uploaded [onto YouTube] probably infringe copyright if they're reproductions or communications of the whole, or even a little bit of the [original]."

O'Brien says while there have been no prosecutions in Australia yet, major music companies, particularly in the US, have been active in demanding that such videos be removed from YouTube.

Calls for change

He says amendments to Australian copyright law currently being considered by parliament fail to take cases like amateur miming into account.

O'Brien says some types of reproduction are allowed under fair trading provisions in the amendments, but these don't cover cases like the one highlighted in his paper.

He's arguing for a defence of material being "highly transformative" and not competing with the original market.

This would allow a 12 year old amateur to upload a video of herself miming to a sound track with impunity.

"It doesn't have to be a radical change [to the amendments], but something that allows someone to remix a small amount of someone else's work and put it in a different context as long as it's not for commercial purposes and doesn't compete with the original," he says.

"It's pretty hard to see why something like that shouldn't be allowed."

New laws

The federal government last week introduced its proposed changes to copyright law into parliament.

Announcing the move, attorney general Philip Ruddock said the bill demonstrated "the government's commitment to ensuring laws reflect the continual changes to the technical landscape".

A spokesperson says following concerns about the bill, debate has been adjourned while a senate committee gives the legislation further consideration.

"The purpose of draft exposure bills is to circulate them for comment and expose any potential flaws before the legislation is introduced to parliament," the spokesperson says.